


Yellow

by faege



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s06e22 The Man Who Knew Too Much, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-07
Updated: 2012-04-07
Packaged: 2017-11-03 09:24:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/379845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faege/pseuds/faege
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>  <i>When Sam was little, he had a book—a picture book—that he carried everywhere.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Yellow

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://oxoniensis.livejournal.com/profile)[**oxoniensis**](http://oxoniensis.livejournal.com/)'s Fall Fandom Free-For-All 2011 (which goes to show how horribly LATE this dumb thing is) to fulfill a prompt by [](http://cherie-morte.livejournal.com/profile)[**cherie_morte**](http://cherie-morte.livejournal.com/): _Post 6x22!Sam has nightmares and temper tantrums, and Dean soothes them by reading to him like when he was a kid._

 

  
When Sam was little, he had a book—a picture book—that he carried everywhere. Syrup from diner pancakes crusted its pages, the corners were bent from being jammed in duffels and shoved under the Impala’s seats, and rock salt cracked in its spine, but Sam asked for it every night just the same.

It was the one thing Dean had ever seen John retrace his steps for. “Kid won’t stop crying if we don’t get that damned book,” John muttered, leaving the car running while he jogged into the motel office, holding the battered thing above his head so Sam could see.

Sam loved that book.

Dean didn’t know where they lost the book, because by the time he noticed that Sam had stopped begging him to read it every night, Sam was too old to be read to anyway, already twelve and in junior high.

“Hey, Sam, whatever happened to that book you used to have?”

“Huh?” Sam pushed his hair out of his eyes, a mechanical pencil and two highlighters precisely arranged between his fingers.

“That book,” Dean repeated. “Yea big. Yea high.” He indicated with his hands. “Yellow?”

“My biology book?”

“Never mind.”

The thing is, Dean loved that book too.

:::

It crossed his mind in a slew of memories after his impromptu angel-fueled trip to the past, joined by the smell of tomato-and-rice soup and the sound of his mother humming. He’d forgotten but it had been Dean’s book first. It had his mom’s cursive script on the title page— _a gift to Dean on his 1st birthday_ —and his own handwriting in the top corner, leaving no doubt that it was DEENN who owned that book. Sam’s own signature was printed right below his, painstakingly copied from the paper where John had written it down when Sam was four and wouldn’t stop asking where his name was.

For some reason, those big blocky letters and the book they were written in were sitting in the back of his mind when, after the blowup with Cas, they packed Sam up and headed to Bobby’s. Sam fell asleep halfway there, his cut hand wrapped in Bobby’s bandana. He wouldn’t wake up when they finally pulled into the salvage yard, didn’t stir when Dean got him hoisted in a fireman’s hold and carried him upstairs. He pulled the glass from Sam’s hand, flushed the cut with everything in Bobby’s arsenal, wrapped it and laid it on Sam’s chest. And waited.

“Still out?” Bobby asked quietly from the doorway.

“Looks like,” Dean said. “How long do you think he’ll stay under?”

“I wish I could tell you, son. Cas broke the wall, but… Sam fought his way out of the wreckage before. I’m betting his brain’s gonna heal up some and he’ll break out of the coma before you know it.”

Dean flinched. “Don’t call it that.”

Bobby looked at Dean, sympathy wearing lines in his face. “I’ll bet you anything it’s not permanent, Dean. He came back. From whatever was going on in his head, whatever was holding him, he fought his way out and made it to the final showdown. That takes guts, kid.”

“Yeah, but maybe that was it. Maybe that was the end, his last hurrah, and we missed it.”

“We didn’t miss it, Dean. He’s not done.”

Dean dragged a hand down his face. “I want to believe that. More than anything, but we don’t even know what shape he’s in. Not really. He was conscious for, what, an hour?” He took a breath and the rest of the words tumbled out in a rush. “I think we’ve got to face the facts: we don’t know if he’s going to wake up, let alone when.”

“Look, son.” Bobby gripped Dean’s shoulder and shook it a little. “Worrying isn’t gonna do a thing to help your brother. Guilt trips rack up a load of mileage and we’ve got enough bad road as it is. Now if you want to do something,” he dropped something on the bed by Sam’s leg, “I’d start wracking my brain for something that is going to bring Sam back.”

Dean waited until Bobby went downstairs to see what it was and when he did his throat tightened up so he could hardly swallow.

A yellow book.

:::

Dean read the book out loud twenty-six times before dinner. He went downstairs to have some chili and then went back to the room where Sam hadn’t moved and sat down in the chair next to the bed.

“If you’re sick of this, feel free to let me know,” he said. He waited for a second, gauging Sam’s breathing, the slight tremble of his injured hand. Nothing. “Okay, you asked for it.”

The book’s spine cracked just the same and a few grains of salt fell to the floor.

:::

Sam woke up in the middle of the story on the second day. Dean didn’t realize until he heard a clicking noise and looked up to see Sam trying to swallow.

“Hey, hold on.” He had his glass to Sam’s lips before he realized there was still whiskey in the bottom. He cursed and ran to the bathroom, muttering _I’m sorry_ to the mirror as he rinsed it out. He came back to find Sam blinking at the ceiling like it confused him. “Here you go. Sit up, Sasquatch, c’mon.”

Sam drank the water and didn’t speak and fell asleep again. It was okay, though, because he woke up again two hours later at the end of Dean’s one hundred and sixth reading and he stayed awake long enough to have some soup and to croak out, “Hi,” which made Bobby and Dean smile.

:::

Sam was functioning after that. Functioning at the speed of an eighty-year-old man but functioning nonetheless. Naps were mandatory. Eating was also mandatory, and if Dean didn’t watch it, naps and eating would get combined in ways that had toast and jelly smeared all over Sam’s shirt. He stubbornly insisted on digging through Bobby’s library to find any way to stop a Purgatory-packed-former-angel-turned-God and on good days he got them enough leads to keep them hopeful and still had enough energy for a game of poker around the kitchen table.

Not everything was perfect, though. Dean noticed that Sam got confused about little things sometimes: how to make coffee, the right way to tie a bow, whether a label was upside down.

“The kid’s still wiped,” Bobby said. “Can’t blame him if his head’s still a little scrambled. The least we can do is put his socks on in the mornings.”

But it was more than that. Maybe it was the lack of consistent sleep, maybe it was the aftereffects of the Wall crumbling, but Sam woke up from nightmares at least twice every night. Dean tried everything from dredging up an old radio and popping in an Enya CD to setting Sam up downstairs in front of the TV with a documentary on giraffes.

Nothing worked.

“You’re losing it, man. Every day you don’t get enough rest is another day that you’re too tired to deal with the mess Cas left in your head.”

“I know,” Sam said.

:::

Sam woke up screaming Michael’s name that night and then wouldn’t say anything. He laid there, eyes blinking in the glow from the lamp, jaw clenched tight like the minute he relaxed he was going to blurt out the archangel’s name again, and Dean didn’t know what to do.

“Read,” Sam croaked, fingers pulling at a thread on his blanket. He had it twisted around his knuckle tight enough to cut off the blood flow.

Dean hesitated. “How ‘bout we leave the research for tomorrow, huh? I’ll go get something really boring, the stock market section from the newspaper, something about planet alignment.”

Sam shook his head, eyes skipping around the room like he was looking for something.

“You’re not staying up, Sammy. I need to sleep. You need to sleep. That’s it, end of story.”

Sam’s eyes sparked at that and he sat up a little, eyes still drifting until they caught on a triangle of yellow under Dean’s bed. Dean followed his gaze.

“No. You’re kidding.” He picked up the book and showed it to Sam. “ _Curious George_? Seriously? Figured you’d be sick of this thing. I must’ve read it to you a thousand times when you were out.” He sat on the edge of Sam’s bed and nudged until Sam moved his knees. “You remember this from when you were a kid? I got so good, I didn’t even need the book. You liked the pictures, though.” Dean flipped it open, lips quirking into a smile.

“The hat had been on the man’s head,” he read. “George thought it would be nice to have it on his own head. He picked it up,” Dean raised his hand, “and put it on,” then fit his hand over Sam’s head.

There weren’t dark curls under his fingers and Sam didn’t lift his tiny hands to put them over Dean’s.

Sam didn’t do anything.

Dean looked up. Sam was sitting with his hands in fists, eyes shut tight, and Dean snatched his hand away.

Sam’s hands didn’t relax but the lines on his face eased and, damn it, how stupid was he to not think that Sam wouldn’t have the words yet to tell him to be careful about the memories he was going to stir up now because gestures weren’t gestures anymore. Sam was looking at him, already rasping, “Sorry, Dean, I’m sorry, I didn’t think,” (more words than he’d put together at a time all week) when it was Dean who hadn’t been thinking that, hey, maybe his brother who couldn’t sleep because of his grand time Down Under might not like anyone fitting their fingers into the hollows of his skull.

“Don’t, it’s okay,” Dean said, automatic, and hated himself even more. He leaned forward and cradled his face in his hands, willing away the dryness in his eyes and the sore muscles in his neck, the fog that Sam labored under and the way he and Bobby were walking on eggshells, afraid one wrong step would be enough to shatter Sam into pieces. And here he was, knowing all that and still making it worse and then making Sam apologize for it.

He forced himself to sit up and look at Sam, Sam who was watching him, Sam who was as fragile as anything Dean had ever loved.

“Read,” Sam whispered.

“Will it make it better?”

Sam smiled.

The thing is, Dean loved that book too.  



End file.
